October 2015

The puzzle is called Skyline and it’s a packing puzzle. The objective is to place the metal rod in one of the holes in the base and place the nine wooden pieces around it. It was designed by Jean Claude Constantin. When solved, the puzzle looks something like this:

Sometimes with these kinds of puzzles it’s quicker to write a program that finds a solution than trying to solve it by hand. Check out this github repository for a Prolog program that finds solutions for a given rod location.

To use this program open the file skyline.pl in your favorite Prolog interpreter (e.g. SWI-Prolog) and execute the following:

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?- print_solution(pos(4,4)).

+-------+

|ggeeeeh|

|gggdehh|

|ggiddhh|

|iii ddh|

|iiicfff|

|bicccff|

|baaaaaf|

+-------+

true

You can press ; to find alternative solutions. The pos(X,Y) part refers to the location of the metal rod.